Translation Matters
The odds: your risk of getting a serious disease is 2 percent if you do not take a pill, but 1 percent if you do.
Description 1: Taking the pill will cut your risk in half.
Description 2: Only 1 out of 100 people who take the pill will benefit from it.
A review of 35 studies finds that which of these descriptions of the same phenomena is used affect choices of both doctors and patients.
Full article on the different and accurate ways of presenting medicinal information.
It’s funny how the math works on this one.
Of course drug companies (like any company) are going to describe the drug trial’s findings in the best possible light. I wonder how this scenario changes is the pill in question is a placebo?
Interesting.